Summer at Mount Hope (24 page)

Maude threw the glass of water over her. ‘You're hysterical,' she said, fanning her reddening neck.

Ashley put his arm around Maude's shoulder. ‘It's just passion.'

‘You are a maiden's prayer and my sister will be hurt,' said Maude, shrugging his arm from her shoulder.

‘I am an artist,' said Margaret and stomped her foot. ‘It's essential I unleash my passions. “She who has never loved has never lived.” It's a shame you've never lived, Maude.'

‘I have never lived?' said Maude. ‘I'd prefer to be dead at this moment.'

Good, thought Phoeba, now they will watch and see. She went calmly to her room, dried her face on Lilith's best petticoat, dressed in the blue frock she wore to church every Sunday, and strolled with Spot through the vineyard.

‘I hate them all,' she said, and turned her thoughts to more pleasant things; Henrietta, who she hadn't seen for days, and Rudolph Steel.

As the sky darkened and the moon appeared low in the grey sky, she went to retrieve the blouse. It was still in the brown paper bag, but Lilith had discovered it – and shredded it. The guipure lace was torn off and the Japanese silk bows hung in tendrils. Phoeba left it in the tree and said nothing. A calmness washed over her and she wondered if a sense of conclusion was building.

Her mother and sister had worked quickly, for Lilith sat at the stove in Maude's blouse, the sleeves cut to the elbows, the neck square and lined with lace from a petticoat. Maude put down the curling wands and pinned a floral posy behind Lilith's ear. ‘After all that fuss, Phoeba, you choose not to wear your blouse. You are a spiteful girl.'

She could have re-ignited the argument, said she wasn't tizzy enough for lace, told her mother the blouse was destroyed, told her mother she could ask the boundary rider about Lilith's affair. But she didn't. It would be better if Lilith felt victorious. She would dance all night with Marius Overton and everyone would see, including Marius's parents.

The party assembled on the veranda to wait for the sulky. Maude, coiffed and curled with an over-sized ostrich frond shooting from her crown and the family pearls straining around her plump throat. Margaret, startling with her equine beauty wrapped in black and white stripes and a red rose behind her ear. Lilith, still fuming – but pretty in her curls and lace. Phoeba, in her Sunday blue with a white ribbon looped through her loose bun. And Ashley, looking like a gnome in his red checks and green slippers. With a flourish, he presented Phoeba with a sketch of Spot. Her horse resembled a wavy-locked steed fit for bearing archangels in a rococo painting. Ashley could not even draw.

Spot looked at the five people on the veranda, dressed and waiting, then swung his head to look pointedly at the three-seater behind him.

‘You cannot wear that blouse, Lilith,' said Robert. ‘Go and change it at once or no one will go to the dance.'

‘Very well, we won't go.' Lilith sat down, her arms crossed and her lips pressed to a pout.

Her mother sat down next to her. ‘And you cannot wear that hat, Robert,' said Maude.

Robert had dressed in his accountant's suit complete with bowler hat, which looked like an upturned pudding bowl on his head.

‘Well,' he said, flushing with anger, ‘a mutiny.' He held out his hand out to Phoeba. ‘You can be your old dad's partner tonight.'

‘With pleasure,' she said, and lifted her skirt to climb into the sulky.

Margaret and Ashley lined up behind her and as Maude and Lilith began to look anxious, Hadley swung into the lane in the Hampden.

In the manager's house, Henrietta brushed and plaited her hair and wound it in a neat coil around the top of her head. Then she pushed small jacaranda flowers in between the plaits, stepped back from her bureau mirror and smiled, satisfied. She pictured herself, swirling around the woolshed with Phoeba to the pumping beat of an accordion and a piano, and felt a ripple of glee. Dancing was terrific fun.

Her mother stepped into the room.

‘Your father has finished his bath,' she said. ‘You look like you've walked under a shedding jacaranda.'

Soap scum clung in a rough line to the side of the tin tub. Henrietta scooped out a bucketful of water and took it to the homestead vegetable patch, pouring it all over the rhubarb plant. A small stone, brown and slimy like the seed from a stewed plum, fell onto a green rhubarb leaf. Henrietta leaned closer, wondering what it was.

Behind her, from the window, Mr Titterton called, ‘Is that my molar? Bring it here, will you?'

Henrietta decided she would run away. She would go home with Hadley after the dance.

Spot picked a place at the end of the line of tethered horses within earshot of the music. Overhead, the sky was darkening: a great sheet of cloud slid in from the sea and a light wind whipped swirls of dust on the ground.

The harvest dance signalled that the district was nearing the end to the toil and the tension of gathering wool and grain, the end to days spent anxiously scanning the skies for signs of threat. Instead, farmers would begin to look hopefully for autumn rains, luxuriating in the lull, the tinkering and maintenance chores, fencing, the mechanical repairs, the weeding, ploughing, scarifying, sowing.

Robert joined the farmers and workers and Phoeba waited on the loading dock for Henrietta. Shiny red farmers arrived in wagons, work carts, sulkies and carriages with their wives and families, pressed, scrubbed and smiling. The itinerants wandered across from the outcrop and gathered under a tree near the sheepyards, where they would have their own dance. The women from the thresher team, their hair brushed, their faces scrubbed, stood with their weathered husbands in a group. Mrs Flynn and Freckle arrived in their cumbersome supply cart. He wore a clean shirt buttoned all the way up to his chin, and gallantly offered his mother his arm to escort her to the shed.

The homestead glowed in the sunset and the wide front-door stood open. But no figures moved inside and spider-grass skeletons gathered against the hedge. The feeling Phoeba had had earlier, that this was a culmination of some sort, crept over her again. She sensed this would be the last Overton dance for a very long time and felt a desolation worming through her bones. In her mind's eye she saw the French windows boarded up, sheep sheltering on the veranda, the arbour collapsed under a tangle of blackberry bush. She heard the kitchen screen door thudding on its hinges.

‘Hey!' Henrietta ran towards her, her forehead white where her hat had sat too long in summer. Dear Henri, in her clean brown skirt and her plain white shirt, running like a boy through the sheepyards, climbing the fence when everyone else politely ambled the long way around. Her desolate feeling left her and she felt warm seeing her cheerful friend again. They would dance. It was a happy time.

They found a seat together inside on a hay bale close to the piano. The floor had been swept and washed, bales placed about the walls for seating, and behind them, straw had been spread for sleepy children. A long trestle table was stacked with punch and sandwiches, cakes and sweets, all covered by netting.

‘I'm going to dance with Rudolph tonight,' said Phoeba.

‘He's very nice, Phoeba. He stacked wood for me the other day and told me I was the best wood-chopper he'd seen. But there's something elusive about him.' Henrietta thought for a moment. ‘Don't you want to be a vigneron?'

‘Yes.'

‘If you married Hadley, you'd get me too.'

‘I had hoped, Henri, that if I did or didn't marry anyone you'd still be my dearest friend.'

‘You want everything, Phoeba,' Henrietta said.

Lilith passed and said, ‘Well if it isn't the frowsy sisters.'

Henrietta watched her circle the shed, her shoulders back, thrusting out her bosom to show off her blouse. ‘It's a shame,' said Henrietta. ‘She's actually quite a nice girl, but she's spoilt, and she's about to fall.'

‘Hopefully, she'll fall on her feet,' said Phoeba, and told Henrietta about catching Lilith with Marius at the outcrop. Henrietta wasn't surprised.

‘Lilith always wanted to play weddings when we were kids,' said Henrietta, ‘but you never know, Phoeba, Marius might do the right thing.'

‘I bet as far as Mrs Overton is concerned Lilith is the wrong thing altogether.'

‘He seems an honest sort, and being honest can never be wrong,' said Henrietta.

Maude arrived on the vicar's arm and Hadley followed, looking quite sober and important, a brand new pipe between his teeth. Gradually the shed filled with dancers.

Henrietta took Phoeba's hand, squeezed it and whispered: ‘I've come to a decision, Phoeba. I'm running away tonight. I'm going home with Hadley. Mother will have a conniption but if she begs me to come back, I'll make a stand. If it all goes really wrong I'll get a job in Melbourne.'

‘Henri, there are no jobs!'

‘I know what you mean about having half a life, about marrying my brother being a compromise. And Phoeba, I want to be free too.' Mrs Flynn rolled proudly past wearing a new frock, still creased from where it had been folded in its brown paper parcel. ‘Mrs Flynn has a perfect life,' said Henrietta, watching her.

‘Yes.'

The vicar took up a spot at the centre of the dance floor, clapping his hands, his belly jumping. The crowd hushed and the vicar informed them that a plum cake – which Mrs Crupp had kindly donated – was to be raffled to raise funds to line the church ceiling. Then he asked them to bow their heads.

‘Let us pray for relief in this time of scarcity, Cast thy burden upon the Lord: And he shall nourish thee …'

That was as far as he got as the lamplighter turned the lamps down and the floor started to fill. Aunt Margaret and Ashley were first up along with Freckle and his mother, Lilith and the farrier. Hadley swept Phoeba onto the dance floor as the pianist sat on the piano stool. She adjusted her spectacles, struck a chord and the other musicians – fiddle, an accordion, a jew's harp and a concertina – arranged themselves to tune their instruments. The vicar made a bee-line for Henrietta, who quickly grabbed the tarboy and carried him to the floor. The vicar turned abruptly to Maude, who declined, saying a polka would make her fruit water repeat, and Mrs Titterton said her bunion was playing up. He made his way to the refreshment table instead.

The band struck up and the dancers moved off as if they'd practised together all through winter and spring. Lilith swung in circles with the farrier, then a stockman took her and the farrier took Phoeba from Hadley for a quadrille. But there were no spare partners, so Hadley fought his way through the galloping dancers to the edge of the dance floor, where Mrs Flynn clapped her hand on his shoulder. He turned to see her broad, two-tooth smile and away they went.

During the second bracket the atmosphere was ardent and joyous, the floorboards bouncing and the flames in the kerosene lamps blinking. The dignitaries – Marius and Mr and Mrs Guston Overton – had arrived.

Rudolph wasn't with them and Phoeba couldn't see him anywhere. But it didn't matter. She was dancing with Henrietta, rollicking around the shed like a couple of boys while Maude watched grim-faced with anger.

Hadley abandoned Mrs Flynn and approached the Overtons, but the pipe between his teeth turned upside-down and ash fell onto the hay-scattered floorboards. Hadley tap-danced to smother them, slapping ash from his coat.

It was very early for anyone to be making a spectacle of themselves but Henrietta and Phoeba didn't care. They bounced on, Ashley and Mrs Flynn, her fat red curls springing round her bouncing breasts, joining them – leaping high and clapping like frolicking barmaids.

It was then that Lilith lost her footing. The vicar, earnest, red and sweating, jogged her past Aunt Margaret, who was kicking her feet and singing along, and she tripped, flipping over the hay bales and landing on her back with her shoes and petticoats in the air. Maude struggled to her feet and concealed the spectacle from the onlookers with her bulk. The vicar fetched punch. The dance ended, and Henrietta stepped away from Phoeba with a wink and a grin. Rudolph Steel was at Phoeba's side.

‘I don't normally dance so I hope you'll understand my feet.'

She wiped her damp palms discreetly on her skirt and felt his hand on her waist. She couldn't think of anything to say.

‘How's Spot?' he asked.

‘Much happier,' she said, but it came out in gusts as she paced in circles. She had to concentrate; he wasn't a practised dancer. It was like dancing with her father – you just had to go where he pushed you and keep your feet tucked in. The fiddle whipped into a sharp reel and Rudolph grimaced at her and they laughed, shuffling about the floor and ducking and weaving to avoid collisions. She wanted him to take her to the far end where it was quiet, but Hadley was there, watching.

‘I like your blue dress,' he said. ‘It's becoming.'

‘Thank you.' She felt his breath on her hair as Marius danced past with Lilith. Such a pretty couple.

‘What do you think will come of Marius and Lilith?'

Rudolph held onto her even though the music had stopped. ‘She has a lot to offer someone in his position.'

‘Like what?' said Phoeba.

‘Constancy, affection, security …'

The pianist struck up and Rudolph waltzed her, the room behind him circling. She felt safe, as if there was no one else there – what did he mean, ‘security'?

‘But what about Mr and Mrs Overton?'

He shrugged. ‘In these times people have to adjust their expectations.'

She sensed there was something he wasn't telling her, but she felt so good dancing to lovely music in the warm shed that she didn't pursue it.

‘I mean,' he said, ‘wealth isn't necessarily a secure thing; a friend and loving partner is – to most people.'

They found themselves dancing in a corner and Rudolph concentrated on shuffling them out again. She wished they could stay on their own and just dance in very small circles.